All at once Oliver turned and said so suddenly that she, walking by his side, started: "Laura? Do you remember this time last year?"
And as she answered the one word "Yes," he went on: "It was to-night, just a year ago, that I promised to become your friend. And as long as you were another man's wife, I kept my promise, at any rate to the letter. If you tell me to go away for the next three months, I will do so—to-morrow. If I stay, I must stay, Laura, as your lover."
As she remained silent, he went on quickly: "Do not misunderstand me. I only ask for the right to love you—I do not ask for any return."
She was filled with an exquisite, tremulous joy. But that side of her nature which was restrained, and which had been so atrophied, was ignorant of the generosities of love, and shrank from quick surrender. So all she said, in a voice which sounded very cold to herself, was, "But that, Oliver, would surely not be fair—to you?"
"Quite fair!" he exclaimed eagerly—"quite fair. In no case would I ever wish to obtain what was not freely vouchsafed."
He muttered, in a voice so low as to be scarcely audible, some further words which moved her strangely, and vibrated to a chord which had never before been touched, save to jar and to offend.
"To me aught else were sacrilege," were the words Oliver Tropenell said.
By now Laura's eyes had become accustomed to the darkness. She could see her companion's tall, at once broad-shouldered and lean figure, standing at rights angles to herself, keeping its distance....
Taking a step forward, she put out her right hand a little blindly, and laid it on the sleeve of his coat. Laura had always been an inarticulate woman, but with that touch, that fleeting moment of contact between them, something of what she was feeling took flight from her heart to his——
"Laura?"